How to set up collectfast for django on heroku?

Question

How can I set up collectfast for django on heroku? This is assuming I've already successfully set up static files hosting and serving from Amazon S3.

Answer 1

1) To disable heroku's automatic collectstatic, run:

heroku config:set DISABLE_COLLECTSTATIC=1

2) Add the following to settings.py to use a table in your database for the collectfast's caching. Commit and push the change to heroku.

CACHES = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.locmem.LocMemCache',
    },
    'collectfast': {
        'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.db.DatabaseCache',
        'LOCATION': 'collectfast_cache',
        'TIMEOUT': 60,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'MAX_ENTRIES': 10000
        },
    },
}
COLLECTFAST_CACHE = 'collectfast'

4) To create the required cache table in the database, run:

heroku run createcachetable

5) To restore heroku's automatic collectstatic, run:

heroku config:unset DISABLE_COLLECTSTATIC

Each deploy will now correctly use collectfast to collect modified static files to s3.